Gangland violence adding to monarch's torments

Tourism that would help preserve the monarch's forest is down.

By Dudley Althaus :
February 7, 2011

Monarch butterflies migrate annually from the U.S. and Canada to the Sierra Madre mountains of Western Mexico.

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EL ROSARIO, Mexico — A soft afternoon sunlight cuts into a chilly forest of firs that provides winter haven for tens of millions of monarch butterflies.

As their forebears have for time beyond memory, these monarchs have traveled as much as 2,700 miles, from across much of the United States and Canada, winging through Texas en route to this refuge in the central Mexico mountains.

Great gathered bunches of monarchs hang dormant in the branches of the tall and densely packed oyamel trees. Clusters of them fall like melting snow from the limbs, some hitting the ground, where many die, others pirouetting gently aloft.

There's scarcely a breeze, but the woods murmur with the flutter of fragile wings — maybe hundreds of thousands of them — as the sun's warmth sets the creatures to flight.

Fears of bloodshed has gutted tourism to the 216 square-mile reserve where the butterflies roost in the high mountains of Michoacán and Mexico states, 120 miles west of Mexico City.

Only 33,000 tourists visited the reserve last winter, about a third of the normal traffic, and the numbers are down sharply from that so far this season, officials and local business people say. Because many local villagers have been weaned from cutting down the forests by the promise of tourism income, the drop presents a worrying new hazard.

“Insecurity has affected everything,” said Ismael Gonzalez, 55, the senior elected official in El Rosario, the village that is the gateway to one of four butterfly sanctuaries open to the public. “If the tourists don't come, people have to think of something else.” Michoacán and parts of neighboring states belong to La Familia, a homespun gangster band known for producing marijuana, methamphetamine and macabre murders.

La Familia gunmen last June ambushed a federal police convoy outside Zitacuaro, the city of 155,000 that anchors the butterfly reserve, killing 12 officers. In December, gangsters blockaded roads surrounding the city after the government killing of a La Familia chieftain.

“Obviously that has affected us,” said Rosendo Caro, director of the reserve, who was shocked by the negative reactions when he met recently with a group in Chicago to talk about the butterflies and tourism. “But the violence is between the bad guys. They don't bother us.”

La Familia leaders promised last year they would not target tourists. About two weeks ago, gang bosses reportedly announced that they were disbanding.

Peace would be a welcome boon for the butterflies. But they face a daunting crucible all the same.

The monarchs that arrived here in the fall are the great grandchildren — and sometimes the great-great-great grandchildren — of those that left 11 months ago. Scientists say the monarchs travel as much as 80 miles in a day, guided by the sun back to their Mexican winter home.